Chinese woman, 101, grows mystery horn
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
An elderly Chinese woman has stunned her family and fellow villagers by growing from her forehead a horn than resembles a goat’s.
Grandmother Zhang Ruifang, 101, of Linlou village, Henan province, began developing the mysterious protrusion last year.
Since then it has grown 2.4in in length and another now appears to emerging on the other side of the mother of seven’s forehead.
The condition has left her family baffled and worried.
Her youngest of six sons, Zhang Guozheng, 60, said when a patch of rough skin formed on her forehead last year ‘we didn’t pay too much attention to it’.
‘But as time went on a horn grew out of her head and it is now 6cm long,’ added Mr Zhang, whose eldest brother and sibling is 82 years old.
‘Now something is also growing on the right side of her forehead. It’s quite possible that it’s another horn.’
Although, it is unknown what the protrusion is on Mrs Zhang’s head, it resembles a cutaneous horn.
This is a funnel-shaped growth and although most are only a few millimetres in length, some can extend a number of inches from the skin.
Cutaneous horns are made up of compacted keratin, which is the same protein we have in our hair and nails, and forms horns, wool and feathers in animals.
They usually develop in fair-skinned elderly adults who have a history of significant sun exposure but it is extremely unusual to see it form protrusions of this size.
The growths are most common in elderly people, aged between 60 and the mid-70s. They can sometimes be cancerous but more than half of cases are benign.
Common underlying causes of cutaneous horns are common warts, skin cancer and actinic keratoses, patches of scaly skin that develop on skin exposed to the sun, such as your face, scalp or forearms.
Cutaneous horns can be removed surgically but this does not treat the underlying cause.
Green UFO spotted over windmill
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
Maybe the aliens took a wrong turn or maybe they just love a bit of history. But this UFO curious green light was seen hovering over a 19th century windmill in Norfolk.
The curious green light was spotted by photographer Peter Rye who wanted to take night-time images of Denver mill in Downham Market.
The landmark, which was built in 1835, is lit up at night and so Mr Rye set up his camera on a tripod to take long exposure pictures of the mill.
While he was there he didn’t hear or see anything unusual and it is only when he got home to King’s Lynn that he realised there was something odd about the images he’d taken.
The green light was on some images but not others indicating it was not a smudge on his lens and it appeared to have moved from right to left.
Plane? Helicopter? Gyrocopter? The theories abound in and around the villages close to the windmill, which is 30 miles from an RAF base, about what went on that February night.
Lindsay Abel, manager of the windmill, told Mail Online: ‘It is very strange it has to be said.’
She said the building was an aerial landmark for pilots and had even been used as a navigational tool during World War II.
‘The Germans used it in the war when they headed up to the Midlands to bomb,’ she said.
‘Maybe the UFO looking down saw these strange sails and wondered what the hell it was!’
Malcolm Robinson, founder of Strange Phenomena Investigations, said he thought the photograph showed a Chinese lantern.
He said: ‘[Chinese lanterns] can be from 2 to 6 feet across and a candle can be lit inside them whereupon the individual then releases them into the sky.
‘Chinese lanterns have given rise to many a false UFO report here in the UK.
‘What I think has happened here is that the paper which makes up the Chinese Lantern could have been made of green paper and the candle would shine through the green paper turning the image/light to green.
‘When photographed, the cold night air would intensify around the light making it blur for the camera.’
The 19th century windmill stopped working in 1941 when its sails were struck by lightning but has since been restored and is the last working windmill in Norfolk.
Rare all black penguin spotted
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
An “astonishing” black penguin suffering from a rare condition has been photographed by wildlife enthusiasts.
The penguin, believed to be suffering from a condition known as melanism, was spotted on Fortuna Bay, a sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, about 860 miles off the Falklands.
A group of travellers had travelled to the island to watch local wildlife and one of the group, Andrew Evans, took this picture of the penguin, one of several thousand.
“Observing this black penguin waddle across South Georgia’s black sand beach revealed no different behaviour than that of his fellow penguins. In fact, he seemed to mix well,” he wrote on a National Geographic blog.
“Regarding feeding and mating behaviour there is no real way to tell, but I do know that we were all fascinated by his presence and wished him the best for the coming winter season.”
Biology experts say that because black penguins are particularly rare there is very little research discussing the subject.
Melanism is however, common on other animal species such as squirrels.
It is estimated that about one in every 250,000 penguins shows evidence of the condition.
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology expert Dr Allan Baker, from the University of Toronto, said the Antarctic penguin was black because it had lost control of its pigmentation patterns.
After being shown the pictures by National Geographic, Dr Baker, also the head of the Department of Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum, described them as “astonishing”.
“I’ve never ever seen that before,” he told the magazine.
“It’s a one in a zillion kind of mutation somewhere. The animal has lost control of its pigmentation patterns. Presumably it’s some kind of mutation.”
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the condition is the darkness in an animal’s skin, feathers, or fur is acquired by populations living in an industrial region where the environment is soot-darkened. It can be gene related
It does, however, mean that the probability that its members will survive and reproduce is enhance.
The condition evolves over the course of several generations.
But due to being lighter in colour, they become more conspicuous to predators.
[via: telegraph.co.uk by Andrew Hough]
‘Bottled ghosts’ sell for £1300
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
Two bottled “ghosts” have sold for NZ2830 (£1305) in an online auction in New Zealand.
The ghosts, supposedly trapped inside two glass vials, were put up for bidding by Avie Woodbury from the southern city of Christchurch. She said they were captured in her house during an exorcism.
The spirits were trapped inside the vials with stoppers and then dipped in holy water, which she says “dulls the spirits’ energy.”
She said they were the spirits of an old man who lived in the house during the 1920s, and a powerful, disruptive little girl who turned up after a session with a spirit-calling Ouija board.
Since an exorcism at the property last July led to their capture, there has been no further spooky activity in the house, she said.
The auction attracted more than 214,000 page views and dozens of questions before the winning bid, Trademe auction site spokesman Paul Ford said. The name of the winning bidder was not released.
Woodbury said that once an “exorcist’s fee” has been deducted, the proceeds of the spirit sale will go to the animal welfare group the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
The auction drew derision from some quarters, with one posting on the site declaring: “I have two spirits in bottles at home.
“I think they are called Jim Beam and the other is Johnny Walker.”
Chupacabra captured alive
Monday, March 8th, 2010
We have all heard about the mysterious Texas sightings of an unusual creature, often called a chupacabra. Now, it has been found roaming the countryside in Oklahoma.
This time the creature was caught alive.
The hairless, scared looking critter was captured on a Oklahoma man’s back porch.
The wrinkly, bald creature was spotted by several people wandering around the countryside before being caught . It is now nicknamed the “Dry Gulch Chupacabra” or even “Kojak”.
There have been similar findings in recent years in Texas. Each time many have believed them to be one of those legendary blood sucking chupacabras.
But experts have been quick to disagree, as KENS 5 reporters have documented in the past.
The Dry Gulch Chupacabra, or Kojak , was taken to a wildlife animal rescue center where animal caretakers had to take a much closer look to figure out what she really is.
At first someone thought she was a baby wallaby, but upon closer inspection they determined the animal was actually a raccoon.
Animal caretakers say the raccoon has an advanced case of mange, but will eventually grow its hair back and look like a normal raccoon.
And so, the mystery is solved…this time!
Is there alien life in a Californian lake?
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Do alien life forms exist in a Californian lake? Could there be a shadow biosphere? One scientist is trying to find out
Mono Lake has a bizarre, extraterrestrial beauty. Just east of Yosemite National Park in California, the ancient lake covers about 65 square miles. Above its surface rise the twisted shapes of tufa, formed when freshwater springs bubble up through the alkaline waters.
Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a geobiologist, is interested in the lake not for its scenery but because it may be harbouring alien life forms, or “weird life”. Mono Lake, a basin with no outlet, has built up over many millennia one of the highest natural concentrations of arsenic on Earth. Dr Wolfe-Simon is investigating whether, in the mud around the lake or in the water, there exist microbes whose biological make-up is so fundamentally different from that of any known life on Earth that it may provide proof of a shadow biosphere, a second genesis for life on this planet.
Arsenic is chemically close to phosphorus. While phosphorus is a primary building block of life on Earth — an essential component of DNA and ATP, the energy molecule — arsenic is a deadly poison. In Mono Lake there are micro-organisms that live with arsenic. But they don’t incorporate it into their biology.
Dr Wolfe-Simon has theorised that there may be life that chose an “evolutionary pathway” to utilise arsenic. If such microbes existed, it could suggest that life started on our planet not once but at least twice. In turn this would help to support the idea that life is much more likely to have started elsewhere in the galaxy.
“There is life ‘as we know it’ and there is life ‘as we don’t know it’. What would that look like? I am trying to give us a framework to work with to help us look for what ‘we don’t know’, the particular framework of arsenic,” she says.
Dr Wolfe-Simon has taken samples from the mud and the waters of the lake and is performing a series of multiple dilutions — hugely increasing the levels of arsenic and reducing residual phosphorous to zero. She adds sugar, vitamins and other nutrients to encourage organisms to grow and tests the results.
Her experiments are not yet over but she is quietly pleased with the progress she is making. “We have some very exciting data,” she says. The results should be published by the end of this year.
She points out that Mono Lake arsenic life, if found, may only go as far as proving the extreme adaptability of life on Earth billions of years ago. It is generally agreed that on early Earth the chemical soup was very different because of the material being thrown out of the planet’s depths by volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and the lack of biologically derived oxygen. If arsenic was around in far greater concentrations then, perhaps “arsenolife”, as she calls it, in Mono Lake is evidence of that ancestral life, a finding that would deepen our understanding of how life on Earth got started.
But she hopes that her research may help scientists to reconsider what alien or “weird” life might look like: “It may prove that there are other possibilities that are beyond our imagination. It opens the door for us to think about biology in ways we have never thought. We are going to look for life on other planets and we only know to look for that which we know. This may help us to develop tools to look for something we have never seen.”
Her work is funded by the Nasa Astrobiology Institute and she is based at the laboratories of Professor Ron Oremland, of the US Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. Does she believe that there are alien life forms out there? “I don’t know how there could not be extraterrestrial life,” she replies.
Off-licence staff scared by CCTV spirit
Friday, March 5th, 2010
Mysterious things that get drunk in the night are causing terror among staff of a Carlisle off-licence.
Two women working in Simply Food & Drinks in Durranhill Road, Botcherby, were stopped in their tracks when a strange white mist appeared on CCTV screens showing the outside of the store.
Trish Nolan was working in the shop alongside Sonya Hird when the mysterious spirit appeared to drift in and out of the shop almost 10 times in one hour on Tuesday night.
Miss Nolan, 42, said: “I have never believed in things like ghosts until that night but unless somebody can explain to me what it was, I believe now.
“I wish to God I hadn’t seen it. I kept serving afterwards, but half the people that came in were standing staring at the screen.”
The ghostly apparition could only be seen on the shop’s CCTV cameras, and the recording has quickly become notorious around Botcherby.
One theory says that the spook has been disturbed by workmen renovating a flat across the road, which was also said to have been haunted.
And it is an idea that makes sense to Miss Nolan.
She said: “I turned around last night and said I felt that it was coming across the road as they have disturbed the flat upstairs. I said to Sonya before we saw anything I was freezing, right down my right hand side I was freezing. At one point we were standing there and I said ‘it’s going to happen again’, and it did.
“I am the worst for watching the CCTV screen while I’m working, and I have never seen anything at all before this. As the night goes along it gets a brighter orange and seems to be more of a definite figure.”
To view the CCTV capture CLICK HERE.
Did Canadian researcher snap Sasquatch?
Friday, March 5th, 2010
A Canadian researcher managed to take a picture of the face of the legendary hairy giant – the mascot of the Winter Olympic Games 2010.
Randy Brisson, a well-known Canadian cryptozoologist, shared hot information with his Russian colleagues. The researcher sent a photograph of the North American Bigfoot to Igor Burtsev and Dmitry Bayanov, the directors of the International Center for Hominology. The Canadian took the picture of the creature in Vancouver, the capital of Winter Games 2010.
The Canadian cryptozoologist said that he had seen a Sasquatch peeking out from behind a huge stub in the woods near Pitt Lake. The spot, where the creature was supposedly photographed, is quite far from sports objects.
Randy and his son Ray found big tracks on the snow along a hauling road. The footprints were quite big – it was obvious that they had been left by an adult creature. There were smaller footprints found nearby too.
The toes on the feet of both the adult and the youngster were pathologically angled to one side. The researcher claimed that the creatures were breeding since he had found the footprints of both a parent and a baby.
Mr. Brisson also said in his message to the Russian researchers that he and his son decided not to trace the couple because the creatures, when trying to escape, were throwing rocks at them.
The story may sound very strange, but Burtsev and Bayanov said that they had never exposed the Canadian of any falsifications in their studies of the unknown.
Flying Hovercraft for sale in New Zealand
Friday, March 5th, 2010
The ultimate in big boys’ toys – a hovercraft that flies – has been put up for sale on an internet auction website by its New Zealand inventor.
Rudy Heeman, who lives in the South Island city of Nelson, requisitioned a gas bottle from the family barbecue, parts from his wife’s car, and the control lever from his daughter’s motor scooter for his creation.
Looking like a conventional hovercraft but with the addition of detachable wings, the vehicle cruises at 56mph when flying, has a range of more than 140 miles, and reaches a height of about 10 feet.
It is powered by a 1.8-litre engine.
On the www.trademe.co.nz auction website the sale has already received more than 100,000 hits, has shot past the reserve price of NZ$20,000 (£9,300), and has attracted a long string of questions from viewers.
Mr Heeman, who has been building hovercrafts as a hobby in his back yard for more than 13 years, said this is his first flying model.
He says on the website: “It has been called all sorts of things, including aircraft, aeroplane, hovercraft and flying boat.
“It is in fact a WIG [a wing in ground effect] in the form of a hovercraft
“This machine is fast and furious, it roars like a lion and is not for the faint-hearted. It is adrenalin-pumping and exciting.
“Having a go on it is like a bungee jump, however, the thrill lasts as long as the ride.”
Mr Heeman said he thought farmers could make good use of his invention.
“You can land in a paddock and you wouldn’t have to worry about opening and closing the gates. You just go over them.”
The lightweight, canvas-covered wings are attached to the craft with what he calls a “Jesus pin”.
“If that comes out, you see Jesus,” he said.
Because the hovercraft is not classed as an aircraft under New Zealand aviation laws, the operator does not require a pilot’s licence.
It has taken Mr Heeman, a mechanic, 800 hours to build his invention and he has clocked up more than 75 hours’ flying time in it.
He said he was selling the craft because he needs the funds to get started on more “secret projects”.
Tiny dragon similar to Avatar’s Turoks
Thursday, March 4th, 2010
James Cameron’s Avatar may have boasted gigantic flying lizards called Turoks, but did you know they were more than just virtual reality?
Neither did we until we saw this miniature Indonesian version.
Browse features
- Aliens (3)
- Black Magic (9)
- Creatures (10)
- Ghosts (11)
- Poltergeists (3)
- Psychic Powers (1)
- UFOs (5)
Browse news items
- Aliens (38)
- Black Magic (13)
- Conspiracy (39)
- Creatures (45)
- Entertainment (58)
- Ghosts & Hauntings (44)
- Mythology (15)
- Natural Phenomenon (47)
- Science & Technology (48)
- UFOs (57)
